Identification and Quality Control of Chinese Medicine Based on the Fingerprint Techniques

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) contains a large number of herbal medicine and Chinese patent medicine, each of which contains many compounds that may be relevant to the medicine's putative activity. The homonym and synonym are very popular in TCM for its source complex. How to identify species and control the quality of TCM has become urgent, and fingerprint techniques have now been widely used in TCM for these purposes. In the present paper, four popular fingerprinting techniques (CE, HPLC, GC, and XRD) and their current applications in TCM are reviewed. All these techniques are proved to be an advanced and effective way to get an accurate and integral fingerprint, and each is discussed in detail with examples. CE, HPLC and GC are widely considered as the ideal methods to work out fingerprint analysis. GC is outstanding in analyzing the volatile components and HPLC has advantages in the analysis of the majority of chemical components of TCM. However, because of the complexity of chemical components in TCM, it is very hard for single CE, HPLC or GC to characterize all these components. Hyphenated techniques are strongly recommended for the purpose of quality control of TCM. It is concluded that more rational approach to the authentication and quality assessment of TCM is essential and the fingerprint techniques might be a powerful tool for quality control of TCM in the near future for their unique advantages.

Methodology An efficient approach to identify Ginkgo biloba cultivars by using random amplified polymorphic DNA markers with a manual cultivar identification diagram strategy

“…However, homonym and synonym frequently affected Ginkgo cultivar exchange and protection efforts (Zhong et al, 2009). China is a major Ginkgo-producing country, thus cultivar identification has become imperative for plant scientists, with the purpose of servicing agricultural growth and variety protection.…”

“…As necessary, cultivar exchanges in different regions and/or countries naturally become greatly important as cultivation efforts expand. However, since Ginkgo cultivars are often named based on a local name or vernacular names, homonyms, and synonyms are quite common (Zhong et al, 2009), which greatly affects cultivar exchanges and protection, and inhibits development of the Ginkgo industry.…”

Ecklonia stolonifera inhibits lipopolysaccharide-induced production of nitric oxide, prostaglandin E2, and proinflammatory cytokines in RAW264.7 macrophages

“…With the development of analytical technology, chromatographic methods can be used to develop fingerprints of traditional oriental medicine and their raw materials. Thus, interest in HPLC fingerprint analysis has increased, not only in Asia, but also in other countries around the world (Zhao et al 2007;Tao et al 2008;Yoon et al 2009;Zhong et al 2009). Therefore, the simple HPLC fingerprint of the E. stolonifera plant was explored in this work.…”

Recent Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis in the Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicines

“…Chromatographic fingerprinting technique has been introduced for assessing herbal medicines and widely used in quality control of TCMs [36]. CE is also a good tool for generating the chemical fingerprints of the herbal medicines.…”